iCab

The best thing about iCab is the amount of filtering it lets you do. You can selectively enable plugins, and choose which MIME types to pass to them; Filter Java applets by URL; Block images by server and by image size; Say which servers get to set cookies (and ban images from setting cookies); And best of all, apply permissions to javascript letting you forbid scripts from opening new windows, writing in the status line (Adios annoying scrollers), etc. This can be done by server, so you can avoid all those nasty Geocitiespopups, while at the same time, allowing the preview windows on macthemes.org to appear.

All this is why iCab are getting my $30, and I will probably never go back to Netscrape.

Another feature of iCab is its ability to masquerade as other browsers. Some badly-designed Web sitesdeny service to minority browsers: they test the HTTP User-Agent header, which is supposed to give the browser's name and version, and shunt minority browsers to an arrogantly-worded error page. It might be best to educate these thoughtless sysadmins; however, in the short run, I can change iCab's User-Agent header to look like MSIE, Navigator, or even Lynx.

To showcase this finely-made program's particular strengths, iCab's authors have created a list of "10 features you don't find in other browsers", which I will not cut-and-paste here. You can find it on their Web site, along with the browser itself: http://www.icab.de/.